Though it pains me to impress once more upon your generosity, Lady Mishkan, I must beg this of you.

Grant this request, and I am yours to command

A week after the winter gala, a letter arrived for Lady Mishkan from House Erudite. Attached was an invoice, minted with the Erudite signet, the amount left blank.

“Is it a trap, Sebastian?” Alisandra asked.

“I sense no deceit in the words,” he replied.

“That is not what I asked.”

“Their need is true. What else matters?”

The Lady Mishkan considered her options. Would Father turn away from such a risk?

“What do they need?” she asked.

***

Soon after, Alisandra drove for the Cathedral of Fire. Protests blocked her way on the snowy roads, and the men greeted her noble car with rocks.

No more snowballs, she thought in dismay as the chunks bounced off the windshield. What happens when one of these rocks finds a target?

She retreated, parking several blocks away outside a bustling ice cream parlour. Then she walked to the Cathedral, shivering against the brisk air.

The protestors, brave in dark crowds, proved less willing to harass a Lady face to face. She only had to shove her way through the crush once.

At the Cathedral, she descended to the catacombs. Arriving at a quiet prayer chamber, she knocked.

Father Lucas opened the door cautiously.

“Father Lucas?!” Perhaps she had the wrong room. “Were you praying?”

He shook his head, ushering her inside. “No time for jokes now.”

The Psalms prayer hall was abandoned except for two girls, bundled in furs for a journey. Neither was old enough for the trial they faced, adolescents with ruddy cheeks who fidgeted and hid their chins. Brown haired and mousey, just like Noble Erudite.

Bastard siblings if I hazard a guess. Burdened by a name they can never claim, they instead serve the as the liaison with the heretical.

Lucas closed the door and threw the latch. “Thank you for coming, Lady Mishkan.”

“Father, can’t you send a Psalm instead?” Alisandra demanded. “You risk yourself! Guildsmaster Reed would salivate like a mastiff at the thought of catching you in this act!”

“How can I ignore their plight?” he retorted.

She sighed. “Delegation is not a sin…”

If you are to lead, you must consider the risk to those who follow you if you should fall.

“Every precaution has been taken.”

“Very well,” she acceded. Since the damage is already done.

“I do not come empty handed.” He produced customs papers, signed and notarized. “Good that these girls should find a better climate, but better that they should not have to live as fugitives.”

Alisandra accepted the papers in pleased surprise. “Forged church documents? Father Lucas, I thought you were an honest man.”

He grimaced. “The church teaches many lessons, my child. Some more bitter than others. These girls do not deserve the condemnation they receive. The evidence is scant and the investigation politically motivated. They aren’t even old enough to wed!”

“Old enough by church law,” she challenged. The law only required a girl to have bled.

“Laws can be changed.”

“I begin to wonder if your reformist ideals extend beyond your official statements.”

“My words mint enemies in many quarters.”

I imagine so. Easier for the noble Lords to marry a woman-child, easily molded to their specifications, than to tangle with the grown ones.

She carefully stowed the papers. “We should discuss ways to continue aggravating those parties at a later date.”

He nodded. “Follow this hall to the juncture and head east to the servant’s entrance. Godspeed.”

Alisandra motioned to the duo. “Take my hand, each of you. We make for the harbor, but we will have to hurry.”

They accepted her outstretched hands, and the trust in their hearts warmed her fingertips.

“I am your knight,” she pledged. “Stay close now.”

They fled the Cathedral into the cold night. They ducked away from the protest crowds, skirted the bustling pubs, and raised their hoods against the light of the music houses. The thrumming orange bulbs only darkened the alleys, and Alisandra struggled to banish the shades of demons in every corner. How much worse would it be for the two girls, entrusted to a stranger and then a strange land?

Despite her paranoia, they arrived at the car without incident. She ushered the duo inside the back seat and started the engine.

“This is your car?” the younger Erudite child whispered in awe. “This is the fanciest thing I’ve ever seen!”

Her older sister tried to shush her.

“Oh, what’s this?”

The blender began to rumble, preparing a mixed drink.

“Ugh, it smells terrible.”

Alisandra laughed. “Second button on the left will make milkshakes.”

The younger gasped, and the older one smiled faintly.

While the girls played with the accessories, Alisandra navigated the icy streets at a crawl. The blustery, snowy weather meant only a handful of miserably wagon drivers impeded her route. Unfortunately, that also meant the roads were treacherous with ice on every corner, and she silently thanked Thea for the advanced braking system several times.

The Erudite girls soon quieted.

“Is the Stormmother nice, do you think?” the older one asked.

“You can ask her yourself,” Alisandra replied, “if you can tolerate the wait. I hear its three weeks reservation to catch a glimpse of her from the back row.”

“Three weeks?!”

“Lyn – she is a busy woman.”

“But if we accept her blessings…” the older worried.

“Then we are heretics,” the younger concluded.

“The people of Wave’s Lament will not think so. They have entire schools devoted to teaching young women to dance with serpents on the waves.”

“Will we ever be able to return?”

“Most assuredly,” Alisandra assured with nothing but faith to offer. “This panic will fade.”

She parked outside a warehouse near the wharfs, safely distant from the glowing cluster of Inventors. The southern half of the harbor howled, virtually deserted. A handful of barges slept at mooring until Spring, and a military galleon lurked at the mouth of the harbor. Even in the harbor, the waters chopped and bucked.

I hope these two aren’t prone to sea sickness.

Aloud, Alisandra encouraged them forward. “Not much longer. Pier seventeen. Shall we look?”

Neither seemed keen on games, though, and they hurried through the untended snow. Leaving perfect footprints, they arrived at the seventeenth pier as the moon crested the horizon. Sea spray glistened on the planks, and piles of abandoned netting shivered in the breeze.

Get your imagination under control, you fool, she chided herself. These girls depend on you.

She could feel their trust like fireflies flashing against her palm.

“I don’t see anyone ahead,” the younger Erudite whispered.

“Forward now,” the angel reassured.

“Father said there could be robbers!”

“Robbers are no match for me.”

Heaps of moldered rope and remnants of tack littered the pier, treachery for the unwary foot.

What a junk heap. Who owns this wharf?

Near the end of the pier, an indistinct shadow among the ripple of the waves resolved into a soot-stained fishing boat. The vessel flew no colors, and black cloth hung over the medallions that signified home port and nationality. It bobbed low on the water, weighed by unknown contraband.

What mad captain would pilot that dinghy against the winter seas?! Alisandra wasn’t sure it could survive the trip to the mouth of the harbor!

The captain of the vessel hopped onto the pier a moment later. Worn and swarthy, he regarded the trio like barnacles. “You the ones then?” he demanded, his accent guttural.

Good God above, we’re entrusting noble children to a Moros smuggler? What fools are we?

“Yes, we are,” Alisandra replied reluctantly. She loathed applying social formalities to a smuggler, much less a man of a rival nation, but the safety of the Erudite girls depended on him. “Forgive me, sir, but I was not given your name.”

“Not gonna give it neither,” he growled. He spat a wad of tobacco into the waters. “This your first time plying with dishonest folks, noble girl?”

This is a contest of wills, no different than sharing a table with the Cecille sisters. “You’d be surprised who I consort with. The girls are to be delivered to Wave’s Lament posthaste.”

“Oh, that’s a nice fairy tale. I don’t go to Wave’s Lament.” The smuggler smiled, all broken teeth and tobacco. “Far as I go is the Whistlers.”

“Do you expect them to walk the Dragon to Wave’s Lament?!”

He shrugged callously. “The fee has doubled, courtesy of your overzealous navy.”

“I was informed that all necessary fees were paid,” she replied frostily.

“They were till that galleon parked right up my arse.”

She clenched her fists in rage. She could kill this man. It wouldn’t even be hard. But then what? Would she try to sail an unfamiliar ship through heavy winter seas? Would she abandon Lumia to walk these girls to Wave’s Lament? Hells, why didn’t she contact Lynne beforehand?!

Because then she would drop all her own tasks and handle everything, of course.

Her angelic strength would not prevent the smuggler from knifing the children and dropping them overboard in the dark of night. She had wanted to participate, and now she did. No amount of gnashing her teeth would fix her lack of foresight now.

Extortion it is then.

“How much do you want?” she asked through pressed lips.

“Hundred gold.”

“I do not carry that sort of money on my person.”

He grinned again. “Moon is barely up. Shouldn’t take more than an hour or two to get the notes. Till then the girls can sit pretty with ol’ me.”

“And if I keep them with me?”

“Oh, if you ain’t needing my services, I’ll just be on my way.”

She really could kill this man…

“Not so superior now, are you?” the man grunted.

“I have twenty gold on my person,” she admitted, “and twenty more will be arranged at safe passage of the girls.”

“Oh, you got a banker among the savages?” the smuggler snorted. “You think I sail right into their little port and wait around for their runner boys to chitchat with those braid-headed songbirds?”

“Twenty gold is what I have,” Alisandra reiterated, fighting her own temper. “You have already been paid multiple times over the usual fee.”

Something vicious and fervent deadened the smuggler’s eyes. Humorless and sharp, he snapped, “Be glad I take your gold at all, Godkiller.”

Your forefathers wove that insanity from whole cloth! The only god of your tribe is envy!

How could an entire nation accept such a blatant falsehood like a hungry fish on the line? At least Aure existed! Moros was a nation united by a fugue dream…yet their hatred was all too real.

She remembered the burning jealousy of the Psalms, the power that would see a god of her as well, and shivered.

Why do they hunger for us?

The Erudite girls huddled together, silently waiting. Depending on her.

Alisandra turned on a heel to console them. At that moment, a camera bulb flashed.

“Hells!” she and the captain swore together. No more time for negotiations now.

Alisandra yanked off her boots and pulled out a wad of crumpled gold notes. “Your fee and more. See them safe to the Whistlers.” She stepped into the man’s personal space, ignoring the reek of booze and sea. “If they do not make it whole and unharmed, I will find you, and I will pull your spine out through your mouth. Do you understand me?”

He snatched the wad of notes and counted with the edge of his thumb faster than a warehouse accountant. “Please doing business with you,” he said with a wide smirk. Then he spun to release the mooring. “Get the brats on board. I’m not waiting!”

Alisandra whirled to face the Erudite girls. Kneeling, she pulled her knife from her boot. She faced the older one and offered the knife. “I’m sorry. I never asked your names.”

“I’m Emilia, and this is Jasmine.”

“Emilia.” Alisandra inhaled, and she felt something waiting inside her. No time to think or worry. She seized that power and drew it forward. “The knife is the first weapon granted the young warrior. For your sister, you will be that warrior. If any stand to bar your way, to touch or harm you, then this blade will be your instrument.”

She thought of imps and a mother’s cry, children alone in the dark hold of a foul man’s ship, and the Noble Erudite who entrusted her bastard siblings to the night.

The knife handle sizzled with woodsmoke under her fingertips, leaving crude runes etched into the haft.

“As soon as you reach the Whistlers, seek lodging at a house known as the Singing Kettle. They were friends of my father’s when I was a child, and they will remember us.” She prayed. “I will plead with the Goddess of Wave’s Lament to send an escort to your new home.”

“Fifteen seconds or they stay behind!” the smuggler announced.

“May God guide your way,” she said, hugging both.

Alisandra helped Emilia and Jasmine into the boat, danced back, shoved her boot back on, and waited for the smuggler to guide the vessel away under the power of its hidden engine.

The engine sputtered to life, but the boat only wiggled in place.

“The hells?” the smuggler spat. “A serpent?!”

The water before the ship rippled inland, shoving with equal power against the boat.

No, that’s not right. A serpent would bend the waves themselves; it would have no need to shove them back.

Alisandra counted the possibilities; then she glanced skyward.

High in the cloudy night, a tiny figure rippled. A fairy – Lace’s fairy.

Alisandra ripped a metal mooring post from the wood and flung it skyward. The fairy redirected its winds, flinging the missile away, but its grasp on the boat faltered.

“Out, out!” she yelled to the smuggler. “I will deal with this.”

“Good for you, Godkiller,” he shouted back. Still, he shoved the engine to full and roared forward, all pretense of stealth dropped.

The angel rounded on the dark waterfront. “Don’t think you will reach the girls through me, Lace!”

A woman laughed to herself. “Oh? You have a name for me? Interesting. A well-informed little girl…” Against the darkness, the faint silhouette of a woman betrayed the Redeemer, not more than twenty feet away. “If not a particularly perceptive one.”

The smuggler raced for the mouth of the harbor, bouncing on the waves. The galleon had yet to respond. While the sailors surely heard the roar of a motor, that low boat blended well into the rippling sea.

If the galleon approached, would she stand against her own military to save the two Erudite girls?

A silly question. A Mishkan did not hesitate.

“I plied Alva for everything he knew,” she lied, taking three easy steps towards the Redeemer. “He was quite soused. Of course, you should know. You were at the gala.”

“Yes, I was,” Lace admitted, adjusting the strap on a familiar satchel. She weighed Alisandra with a small smile and cold, hateful eyes. “You noble girls all lie the same. That little upward lilt on the falsehoods that slip so easily through your pretty mouths.”

“Believe what you want,” the angel challenged. I have spent my entire life lying. You won’t bait me that easily.

Above, the fairy began to whistle like a furious engine.

Alisandra cast for new ammunition. Rotten rope and rusted rigging would never pierce those winds.

“Why believe what we can test?” Lace asked, hand slipping into the satchel. Unseen, she wrapped her hand around an old, worn chisel…

Oliver’s weather alarms began to ring in the distance, echo of a bright day before a crowded warehouse.

“Such a sweet Daddy’s girl who dabbles in heresy,” Lace murmured. “Oh, you would make quite the morsel for the Inquisitors. Such a pity they don’t understand what you are. They don’t believe in demons.”

The Redeemer withdrew her chisel, holding it like a club.

“I am not so unprepared.”

Then she knows what I am? Alisandra felt a twinge of relief. That makes things so much simpler. No more waiting on the fickle constables!

The angel surged forward, letting her muscles sing. She closed the distance in two heartbeats and leaped, knee raised and ready to crush Lace’s skull in a single, sharp kick.

In those heartbeats, Lace’s expression progressed from smug satisfaction to wide-eyed surprise to mortal terror.

The witch’s fairy saved her life by shattering the pier between them.

Alisandra tumbled backwards in a hail of splinters. The broken pier wobbled beneath her, no longer anchored to the land.

Lace floated to the cobblestones, wrapped in wind.

Between them, the fairy gleamed with a faint emerald light in the fifteen-foot gap between the shore and the pier.

The Redeemer affected calm, plucking fragments of wood from her dress, but her nostrils flared and fingers trembled. “You are quite the brute,” she snapped. “I see why Donovan fled town. One must wonder what unholy sacrifices you offer to receive such power.”

Alisandra pushed herself upright, noting the metal stud jammed into her forearm. Annoyed, she yanked it out.

Lace watched the woman yank three inches of metal free without a flinch and smiled thinly. “A noble monster…how fitting.”

The pier wobbled, sagging towards the waves. The gap between the shore and the next plank grew another foot.

“I wonder how well you’ll swim with my pet holding your head down?” the witch wondered.

Alisandra scowled, flexed her toes, and Willed her boots to rise. The heels thrummed, and she floated into the air an inch above the planks.

Lace stumbled backwards, swore, and turned on a heel to flee.

Alisandra charged once more. Did you think you were the only one with toys, witch?! You came for a fight, didn’t you?!

Between them, the fairy regarded her. Craned its neck and regarded her feet. More specifically, her boots – still untied from earlier.

A blast of hurricane winds, precisely aimed, caught Alisandra by the toes. The second yanked at the heel. The third tore her boots free, carrying them clear across the harbor.

Alisandra was not the angel of flight; she tumbled to the pier. Smacking her head on a mooring post, she snarled low in her throat. “Hells! The bonded ones get too smart!”

By the time she rose, Lace was gone. Her footprints remained, a trail easily followed, but her fairy did not provide such an easy opportunity.

The elemental beast trilled, floating skyward. It began to gleam emerald as the Verdant, and its winds built to a howling gale that ripped shingles from the warehouses.

Oliver’s air raid siren screamed louder, and the night laborers abandoned their posts. Even the robbers in the alleys booked for higher ground, and an answering wail rose from the distant constables.

The angel flung another post, but the growing bubble of debris shielded the fairy. Glancing to the sea, she could no longer spot the smuggler’s ship.

The galleon snapped on its search lights and entered the harbor, sweeping.

I need to make this damned thing pay for last time. Quickly.

Spitting, the angel took a running leap across the pier. She hit the wharf running, dodged a sudden rain of shrapnel, and snatched up a bundle of mooring ropes. Hauling the rope over her shoulder, she swerved between the fairy’s continuing bombardment of shingles and sprung off old boxes onto an awning, level with the elemental beast.

The fairy maintained even altitude with her, twenty feet away and shielded by debris.

“Let’s see you run from this,” Alisandra muttered, knotting a noose into the heavy rope.

The wailing constables drew closer, and the roaring wind only grew. The windows on all of the surrounding buildings shook, easily visible out to sea, and the galleon turned its spotlight on angel and fairy.

Alisandra crouched against the buffeting winds, gripping the lasso tighter. “I will not let you escape!”

She hadn’t tried to lasso anything bigger than a pony in her entire life, but hells if she would back down from this fight just because the fairy floated out of reach!

I will not hear my people scream in terror again!

Neither paid much heed to the galleon. After all, it was an antique, relegated to guarding the harbor. As a relic of the fleet, it was only outfitted with two dozen old cannons, and how accurate could a cannonball really be?

The captain, being familiar with the deployment of cannons, fired all of them.

A distant puff of gunpowder; a delayed clap of thunder.

Alisandra’s lasso vanished; the awning evaporated; the warehouse crumbled. For a dim moment, Alisandra perceived angry shot whipping past her head faster than the human eye would perceive, and then she fell among the matchsticks of a building.

Shingles and shrapnel rained into the harbor, tinged with a faint coating of evaporated fairy.

The angel slammed to the concrete, and the building collapsed atop her. She laid a moment, ears ringing…

The damned navy fired on me!

Snarling, Alisandra heaved.

The building bucked.

The angel shouldered from the wreckage, swearing, and staggered onto the wharf.

The churned snow showed no sign of where Lace went, the air raid sirens wailed, and constables shouted. The city police would not be humiliated a second time; they already began to sweep the entire district, lanterns high and rifles ready.

“My boots!” Alisandra groused. “Those were a gift!”

There would be no noble bribery sufficient to explain her presence at this crime scene…

Rather than try, she dove into the icy waters and swam. The water was cold enough and the waves angry enough to drag even an experienced swimmer down, and that meant the dragnet would search only the near shores.

The currents nipped at her muscles, whispering the allure of a dark grave, but she ignored the prickling pain and kept her head low.

God above, let the girls be away free. I must contact Lynne; someone needs to find the Erudite girls at the Singing Kettle…and deliver justice on that smuggler if he was as foul as his breath.

Damn that fairy! Another heartbeat, and Alisandra would have broken Lace like a doll!

No more niceties. No more investigations.

When next they met, Alisandra would kill her.

If the photograph should surface in the morning papers…she would not shy from the consequences.

An angel was meant to shoulder the burden.

***

Breaking! Father Lucas aids and abets witches!

A smuggling by night! The priest red-handed!

Exclusive inside! Trust no other sources!

The morning edition landed on the House Mishkan doormat and laid, unread, for over an hour.

Alisandra had spent much of the night treading icy water. She now sulked with a stiff coffee and a heavy blanket in the kitchen. Nearby, Sebastian prepared waffles, and Lynne’s newest enchanted orb dripped steadily into a pan over the sink.

Sebastian eventually dumped the waffles onto a plate for his student, dusted his hands, and went to fetch the milk and paper.

He shook out the morning edition, read the byline, and grimaced.

A few moments later, he dropped it onto Alisandra’s arm without comment.

On the front cover, a grainy picture of pier seventeen showed four figures by night: two youths in heavy cloaks, a seedy captain, and Father Lucas.

“What in the…” Alisandra began.

“A rudimentary imaging technique,” Sebastian supplied. “They overlaid a picture of the Father over your silhouette and took another picture. Note the graininess of the overall photo and the inconsistent lighting. The core shadow across the priest’s face points the wrong direction.”

“Not my point, Sebastian!” the young angel snapped. “What good does it do to run a forged picture on the front page?! Lace should have turned the photograph over to the Inquisition!”

The angel of witness considered. “You said she knows you are an angel.”

“Not by that name, but essentially.”

“Tell me, Alisandra…if you wanted to destroy House Visage, would you target her reputation?”

“Of course not. Mirielle’s reputation is in the gutter – intentionally so!”

“And our own reputation?”

Alisandra slurped her coffee and growled. “Tiny, beaten, limping along. A ripe target for the Inquisition. The investigation would hamstring our House for weeks!”

“And after those weeks?”

The Lady Mishkan smacked the empty mug on the table. “Sebastian, these were the people who sent Father Panther to tear out my throat!”

Lynne’s orb throbbed as the angel of waters attuned. “I’m sorry; I wasn’t listening. What did I miss?”

Alisandra held the paper to Lynne’s orb for examination.

“Cute,” the angel of oceans muttered. “Thank you, Ali.”

“She is a fool,” Alisandra asserted.

“Do not assume that your opponent is a fool just because you do not understand their reasoning!” the angel of witness scolded. “This woman reasons like any other. If she holds a mortal instrument, perhaps she decides to cut the foe she knows will bleed.”

Which implies she saves other weapons to use against angels.

Alisandra stabbed her fork into a pancake. “Fine. Then we must provide testimony for Lucas. Surely you know an imaging expert.”

This was my burden to bear. I do not fear priests!

“And if she does not mean to build a case against Lucas for the Conclave?” Sebastian muttered, half to himself.

Cowardly witch who hides from every fair fight…I’m right here! Leave a good man out of this!

“Will the court of public opinion bother with charges?” He scowled at old memories. “Does it ever?”

Alisandra shook her head. “If he is innocent before the law, the people will understand.”

***

Under a firestorm of criticism so severe he could scarce leave the Cathedral of Fire, Father Lucas resigned his election candidacy two days later.

Expert testimony on the forgery would not surface for another fortnight.

The papers ran a correction on page fifteen.