Khelidon departed with his retinue back to his own estate, to gather the rest of his soldiers and muster more support. Every inch of the city was abuzz with excitement over the Tournament’s events. Their plan could not have succeeded more resoundingly; Rook would not soon be forgotten by anyone.

Aletheia used Arcane Semblance to make them unrecognizable upon a moment of solitude in the streets. Eris was too exhausted to assist. Then it was to the Silver District, the repopulation from the Colosseum following behind them like a creeping flash flood. They needed to keep ahead of the masses or find themselves overwhelmed with admirers.

There were positives and negatives to such a scenario. The more popular Rook became, the better; yet the more visible they were, the easier it would be for Seekers to descend down on them. For now it didn’t matter, because they couldn’t afford the delay: Jason needed to be found before he fled the city.

An intense pain overcame Eris’ gut. She did her best to stay focused while they walked. If she had eaten anything that day she might have thrown up, but adventure-onset fasting had some advantages, and as the hours passed her feelings of vertigo and feverishness faded alongside the blue hue of the sky.

Night fell. The Silver District’s eponymous lights twinkled overhead by the time they reached Jason’s manor. Torches burned behind windows.

“Good,” Eris said. “Someone is home.”

“Do you think he knows what happened?” Aletheia asked.

Rook considered the ancient mansion’s façade. “Only if he had arranged a courier on horseback to come the moment the Tournament was over.”

“He isn’t that smart,” Aletheia said. “But he might’ve left.”

“We’ll know soon enough.”

“Even if he is within, he will likely flee when we enter,” Eris said. “We are too few to cover every exit.”

Rook would not say it, but he was in no condition to enter battle again. None of them were—their only animating force was fury. He hesitated, until an idea lit up behind his eyes in the shadow.

“Are you well, Aletheia?” he asked.

“I’m okay,” she said.

“Eris taught you Hold Portal, didn’t she? Can you use it on the back exits by the gardens? Then we’ll go in through the front.”

Aletheia darted off to do her assigned task. Their illusions fell, and there were people about their business on the Silver District’s streets who might recognize them, but there were larger concerns now than moving unimpeded. After five minutes Aletheia returned to their side; they pressed forward to the door.

Rook tried the handle. Then he glanced to the girl. But just as she placed her hands against the lock to destroy it with a spell, there came the sound of a latch unlocking.

The door cracked. Diana appeared on the other side. Her eyes were wide.

“Rook!” she said.

Rook pulled at the door and pushed through to the other side, grabbing Diana by the shoulder. He shoved her against the nearby wall.

“Where’s Jason?”

“U-u-upstairs,” Diana stammered. “Please, Rook—I’m so relieved that you’re okay—please don’t hurt me. I swear I didn’t—I don’t know what’s happening. I got ready this morning when—he told me we weren’t going, and that we would have to stay here—”

The relief on her voice did sound genuine at first, as did the fear that followed. Eris remained unconvinced. “I do not believe her,” she said, cutting Diana off. She kept her eyes on the hallway. Glancing out windows. “Do not forget she is an actress.”

Rook stared into the woman’s dark eyes. He had seemed composed during their walk across the city, perhaps through virtue of exhaustion—but Eris knew the look of anger he wore now. He was a man who took his friendships very seriously. He did not enjoy the thought that all he gave for them was to be repaid by treachery. For her part Eris was too unsurprised by Jason’s malice to be truly righteous in vindictive pursuit, but she still fully intended to have her vengeance. She also hated being betrayed.

But for no high-minded reasons such as bonds of loyalty or friendship. She simply took pleasure in pettiness.

“Where’s the dwarf?” Rook said.

“I sent him home. I didn’t want—Rook, Jason isn’t himself. Ever since you came back, he’s been different. And before that too.”

“He doesn’t seem different to me,” Aletheia said.

“Nor to me,” Eris said.

“That’s not true!” Diana said. “When we met, he was—heroic. He was loyal. But he’s gotten more and more paranoid every day, and it became worse after that Seeker came—he started carrying that sword around with him everywhere, and he hired more guards, and…for the first few months he wouldn’t let me leave his side. I thought it was sweet. But these last two weeks he’s changed completely.”

“Sword?” Rook said. He let her go.

“Yes, that awful sword. He can’t use it, but he takes it everywhere, like a charm.”

Eris had closed her eyes and leaned against a wall, but now she snapped to Rook. “Arqa’s sword?” she said.

“I’ve seen him wear it. He wore it the night we came,” Rook said.

“It’s just a sword, isn’t it?” Aletheia said.

Eris turned her attention to Diana. “Where are the other guards?”

She put her hands on her belly. “I sent them away.”

“Why are you not in there with him?”

“I was, but—I told him I—I asked him what had gotten into him, and he said there was no other choice, and that we had to wait until tomorrow to see if it was safe to leave. I told him he was acting like a maniac and that I wouldn’t keep myself in a dungeon without any food for a day. He tried to stop me, but Naruom—the dwarf helped me get outside, and—he didn’t come after me. He’s still there, waiting. I’ve been hoping you would come back, Rook, all day! All he told me was that he wouldn’t put the lives of our family on the line for your honor, but I don’t know—I don’t know what happened. What happened?”

“We won,” Aletheia said.

“The Prince changed the rules to have me killed,” Rook said. “But it didn’t work. Eris—”

She had already turned away from him, finding herself lost in thought. Her mind plunged back to Lord Arqa. She remembered the sword with quillons like a bat’s wings. After their victory she detected no demonic Essence about the keep, but then the sword was enchanted—it had functioned as a key to Arqa’s vault. She hadn’t thought to study it deeply. Jason had taken it for his own so quickly…

But she recalled what he told her about vampiric possession. Stories about Lord Arqa, before and after he made his deal for immortality.

“Rook,” she said. “The vrykolakas does not replace its host’s personality. It adopts it, as it adopts his skin, while it peels away his animal inhibitions. You recall what Jason told us—becoming a vampire did not make Lord Arqa a monster: it revealed him for what he truly was.”

“Only a monster would make a deal with a demon,” Aletheia said.

Eris glared at her. Rook took a few steps down the hall.

“What are you saying?” Diana said. She was very scared. Eris believed her performance now.

“Jason is paranoid,” Rook said, rubbing his forehead. “He’s selfish, but above everything else, he’s a coward. He betrays us out of fear for his own life, out of the fear he might lose his wife and child, then becomes so paralyzed by the fear that his betrayal fails that he locks himself in his room.”

“Just like at Sam’al,” Aletheia said.

“Just like at Sam’al. What a bastard.”

“Jason is a good man,” Diana tried to suggest.

“Perhaps by the time you knew him, but the influence of a demon strips away what he has learned and returns him to his baser instincts,” Eris said. She realized all at once. “Of course—the influence of the demon! I banished Arqa, but I did not kill him, for ‘tis impossible to kill an aethereal demon. Its Essence must be bound, in some minor way, to that sword.”

“And it corrupts its wielder,” Rook said.

“Are you—do you think—he’s a vampire?” Diana said.

“He walks about in day unimpeded,” Eris said, “so ‘tis unlikely.”

Rook smiled. “Then we don’t have to kill him after all.”

“Kill him?” Diana shrieked.

Eris spoke as ideas came to her; she very suddenly regretted her mind’s speed. She groaned. “Why did you think we came?”

“You can’t—please, don’t—there must be something else we can do!”

“There is,” Rook said. “It’s all right, Diana.” He put a hand to her shoulder, to comfort her, and Eris nearly collapsed in apoplexy to see him touching another woman while saying those words. “We’ll take the sword from him and—figure something out.”

“What are you talking about?” Eris said. “He has betrayed us twice now! He is a rogue whose treachery led to the rape of my memory by the Seekers, and nearly my and Aletheia’s deaths in all but name; were it not for supreme good fortune and quick thinking on my own part, his second act of deceit would have seen us all three killed! We have tolerated him for long enough!”

“He isn’t in his right mind, you said it yourself.”

“Neither was I when I incinerated Hierax’s soldiers some hours past, yet I doubt he is liable to forgive me!"

“I would hope,” Rook said, “our moral character is stronger than his. Consider this my first act of mercy as duke. Can you show me the way?”

Diana nodded and led them up the stairs. Eris fumed. She did not believe in mercy, and she was not convinced the corrupting impact of this sliver of Lord Arqa could be undone. It was doing nothing to Jason that he had not invited into himself. Also she was annoyed to have been nearly killed by his selfishness twice and she wanted to kill him. She had killed other men for far less.

But Rook always had to play the savior.

“He’s in our room,” Diana said. Her voice lowered to a whisper. She gestured to a door set within an arch, halfway down the hall, facing toward the gardens.

It was shut. Rook held his door by the handle, but looked back over his shoulder. Metal scraped whenever he moved; he was still clad in his armor. “Where are our things?” he whispered.

“He took them,” Diana said. “Eris’ glove, and your swords—I think everything else is inside.”

“Is he wearing my glove?” Eris hissed.

“I don’t know—”

“Rook!” She grabbed the warm metal on his bicep. “I am tapped and Aletheia will be warded off by my gauntlet. How do you intend to capture him unharmed?”

Rook had been carrying his helmet. Here he put it back on. “I won the Tournament. I think I can take a scribe.” He pulled the handle—and it latched. With a gesticulated command Aletheia came to the mechanism. She prepared a spell to pull it off. As she did, Rook pronounced: “Jason?”

A moment.

“Fuck off!”

“Jason!” Diana said. “Open the door, please! We want to help you!”

“I don’t need your help! I don’t need anyone’s help! Just fuck off!”

Rook nodded. Aletheia melted the lock. Gold bubbled against dark steel and the smell of burning iron filled the air. As molten iron fell to the rug underfoot, Rook threw his shoulder against the door—and it opened, but by only a few inches. A chain on the other side caught it again.

“Really?” he said.

“You’re supposed to be dead!”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Rook said.

“I’m warning you, Rook!” Jason shouted. “You’ve done enough damage! When will you get the message?”

“He rescued you!” Aletheia yelled.

“No more rescue needed, thanks!”

“Are you certain?” Eris said.

“You’re a fucking piece of shit coming here, knowing what I had! You didn’t leave when I asked you to! You cocksucker!”

Rook threw himself against the door again. The chain’s anchor broke partially. “Cowardly,” he said, “talkative, and foul-mouthed. That’s the Jason I met in Sam’al.” Another hit—and now the door caught on furniture barricaded against it. “What do you expect to have happen, Jason?”

“I expect you’ll give up. Fucker!”

Eris folded her arms and sighed. She watched Diana, who was very nervous. She looked just like any fretting house-wife. Pregnant. Poorly made-up. Worried about things she could not control. Hard to believe this woman played an imitation of Eris on the stage, for now she exemplified three states Eris herself never would.

“Why did you rope me into this plot, Rook? What’s wrong with you?”

“We won!” Rook yelled. He had pried the door mostly open at this point and held Aletheia back from incinerating the barricade down. “We’re weeks away from Korakos! Your family is safe! I’m Strategos!”

“No one is safe when those lunatics—those Seekers! I don’t fuck with magicians! Your plan is insane! You’re going to get yourself killed and I’m not going to be there for it! I told you! I don’t want anything to do with you anymore!”

Finally the door was opened. Rook slipped through.

“No! Stay back!”

Aletheia rushed in after, tripping on the length of her dress. Eris and Diana watched from the threshold and peeked their heads like meercats around the door.

Jason held Arqa’s sword, but wore what could only be described as pajamas. Eris’ Spellward was on his right hand. He held his blade outstretched at Rook, who towered over him in his full armor. Yet he hesitated when he saw the black sword’s length.

“I’ll kill you, Rook! Leave and don’t come back!”

“Jason,” Rook said, “you aren’t yourself.”

“Feel fine to me.”

Rook drew his sword. He was wary of getting too close to Arqa’s blade, even in his armor. Eris could think of nothing to do without risking herself getting skewered, so she would have to content herself to spectate.

Aletheia spotted their things against the far wall. She sneaked herself that way.

“Give us the sword, Jason. We never should have left it with you—it’s cursed, don’t you see?”

Jason looked down at the sword. “Is that what you tell yourself? That anyone who doesn’t want to kill themselves to help out Old Rook must have a cursed sword? Go fuck yourself. I can’t believe I ever thought you were my friend.”

“I was your friend.”

“Friends don’t bring Seekers to their friends!”

“Friends don’t turn each other in to the Prince,” Rook said, trying to get in closer. He rotated Jason away from Aletheia—

But Jason was too paranoid to fall for that trick. He saw Aletheia and lashed out at her. “Get back, you bitch!” he screamed.

She gasped and fell backward; she let out a spell to defend herself, but it was dispelled by his—by Eris’—glove, and it was only by a quick parry from Rook that she avoided a slice to her arm. He interposed his blade and deflected Arqa’s sword to the ground, but Jason must have been at practice, because he quickly repositioned the blade; he brought it down on the back edge of Rook’s longsword.

The mundane blade from the Colosseum was cut in two like a stick by Arqa’s black steel.

Rook jumped away. He stared down at his broken sword.

“That’s it!” Jason shouted. “You’re dead!”

He began a brutal assault. Rook jumped and dodged backward, but slice after slice landed near him, nicking his armor, and the vampire’s sword cut away at the metal, the metal that had withstood blows from lances and ogres, slowly exposing the mail, gambeson, and eventually skin beneath. Rook tried to come in close, grabbing Jason’s forearm, but an upward swing sliced his cuirass open and cut his skin, forcing him back yet again.

His back hit the wall. Jason prepared a thrust—

“Rook!” Aletheia yelled.

A glinting piece of metal flashed through the air, from her hands to Rook’s.

Rook’s sword, his family sword, landed in his hands.

He parried Jason’s thrust at the last millisecond.

The enchanted sword did not break. Jason hesitated. “Shit,” he said. Then he was the one on retreat.

Rook played with him, controlling where he went across the large bedroom, maneuvering him toward the door, then to the bed. He was focused keeping the blade occupied. Eris knew little about swords, but Rook was clearly the far superior fencer, and he wasn’t going for hits—even when they opened.

He was biding time. Aletheia took Eris’ staff, walked up behind Jason, and hit him upside the head as hard as she could.

He shouted in surprise. Rook seized the opportunity to wrench the sword from his hand, then kick it far away under the bed. He punched Jason and bound him on the ground.

“Are you done?” he said.

“Get off,” Jason mumbled. “Get off! Get off me, you won’t take my family away!”

Diana rushed in. “Jason!”

“No one wants to take your family away,” Rook said. “Eris!”

She knew what was expected of her. The risk was worth stopping the chatter. “Aletheia, assist me,” she commanded, and with the girl’s help she leaned down on top of Jason. To Rook: “Are you certain you would not rather he were transformed into a rat? Or turned to dust?”

“What?” Diana said.

“She’s joking,” Rook said. “Put him to sleep.”

“Yes, like a pet dog,” Eris said. “Oh, fine.”

Thus she put Jason to Sleep.

Jason was comatose in the bed. The four not enthralled to aethereal magics sat on the floor, the sword placed within the fireplace within a wrapping of fabric. Eris had used a sheet to pick it up and carry it that far.

“We came at it with enchanted weapons and armor last time,” Rook said. “I had no idea it was so powerful.”

“Indeed,” Eris said. “A sword that can cut through plate is an artifact to rival the greatest of the Old Kingdom.”

“But we still have to destroy it, right?” Aletheia said.

“Will that free Jason?” Diana said.

“Most likely,” Eris said, “yet how does one destroy an object to which steel is butter?”

“A volcano,” Rook suggested.

“It would be awkward if it didn’t work,” Aletheia said. “How would you get it back?”

Eris had a solution. It was infallible. A perfect way to overcome this conundrum. She could solve Jason’s curse and render this sword safe to use, too.

Its name was Robur.

She cursed herself for being too proud to learn Supernal Vision. She had thought detecting magic was beneath her, and so it was, but there was more to it than that: the truth was she had thought Robur would never leave her. She had thought Robur would follow her like the puppy he was for the rest of his life. It had never occurred to her that, one day, she would be without the ability to see, trace, and identify threads of spells around her, if only indirectly.

Now she needed Supernal Vision desperately. Supernal Vision would tell her the nature of the curse on this sword. It would also tell her its hold over Jason, and when that hold was severed. Without it…

She had one idea.

“Aletheia,” she said. “You were enthralled to Lord Arqa.”

Aletheia didn’t respond—but Rook did. “Eris…” he said softly.

“Rook,” she replied, “we have no choice. Aletheia: do you remember your time in his service?”

She watched the girl, who had a look of a taxidermized cub, as she gave this question long consideration. Her marble-like eyes finally blinked—and held shut. She shook her head. “No,” she said quietly.

“Nothing at all? It is important, no matter how difficult ‘tis to discuss.”

Aletheia glanced around the room for help. Now all eyes were on her. She sighed. “I remember when…” Her eyes closed again and she choked back a tear. Rook embraced her, but she kept him at arm’s length. Finally she continued, “I remember dying. And I remember…stuff after that. Then it was dark and freezing. And then it was like nothing. I don’t remember anything else.”

“What is ‘stuff after that?’”

Another sigh. “I saw a lioness,” she said. “I was in a river and she tried to pull me out, but she couldn’t. Ok?”

Eris almost berated Aletheia for parroting stories of useless superstition, almost criticized the girl for letting mythology influence her memory, but she heard the way she spoke of what she saw. The reluctance. Sorrow. The pain. And the certainty. She still wasn’t convinced, but she decided it was better to hold her tongue.

And in that moment, even she felt pity for the girl.

The room was silent for eons. Rook embraced Aletheia again, and this time she gave in. Diana apologized, although what for—perhaps her husband’s culpability?—Eris remained uncertain.

“That is not what I had hoped for,” Eris said at last. “But it is something. If this is true—it would suggest your soul was kept within Arqa until he was slain, rather than let free to go…wherever ‘tis souls go when one dies. That may mean you still possess a bond with him.”

“What does that matter?” Rook asked.

“I cannot know whether or not the sword is still cursed without Supernal Vision. As I do not know Supernal Vision, we must devise some other way. There may be methods to lift the curse, but to do so I must be able to check for its presence.”

“Can’t we just destroy it?” Diana said. Again.

“I have told you already,” Eris replied, now irritated, “we will have no success with such a method.” Then she took the lead. She grabbed Arqa’s sword by its sheet wrapping and revealed its hilt. She was careful not to touch it herself—but she offered it to Aletheia.

Aletheia stared at it for a long time. But at last she took it, by the hilt, one hand holding the flat of its still-covered blade. And she shuddered.

Eris watched the blade intently. She detected nothing beyond its enchantments, no obvious sign of a demon at least, but the girl considered the sword’s weight carefully.

Thinking…

A yelp. The hilt clattered to the ground. Aletheia scrambled backward with a look of horror on her face, all the way to the windows.

Rook pursued her. “What’s wrong?”

She stared at the sword like it was a tarantula. Shaking her head. “It’s him,” she stammered. “I—I hear him, I can hear him. I heard him when I—”

She covered her ears and pulled herself into a ball. Rook hugged her. Shielding her from the room.

Eris picked up the sword. She held it, like Aletheia had, for several minutes, but she heard no whispers and felt no demon.

A curious curse.

She waited for Aletheia to calm. Waited, at least, for her ears to be open again. Then she asked, “What did he say?”

“He said to…use the sword to cut myself,” the girl replied at length. “He said he wanted to taste my blood again. And even when I dropped the sword I still heard him.”

“Can you hear him now?” Rook said.

She shook her head. But that gave Eris what she needed—confirmation of suppositions. She focused again on the sword, and like when banishing any demon she reached out with her Essence to find that of Arqa. If she could locate some trace, just a hint, of the vampire on the air, she could banish it and render the sword inert. With herself both drained and overloaded it was no easy task, but she spent nearly an hour in meditation, searching and searching hard, running her finger up and down the blade’s fuller, feeling the weight of its black metal in her hands...

But there was nothing. She had been wrong, or she still was missing something. There was no shard of any demon here. If Lord Arqa still had a connection to this sword, it was unbanishable: it was part of the steel itself, forged into the metal centuries ago.

She was so sure of herself, so certain that she would be able to exorcise Arqa from the blade, that she almost missed it when it came. What she anticipated was a whiff of a demon, however weak, from Arqa’s sword. But instead, as she sat there frustrated, uncertain what to do, she received the faintest impression against her Essence. A pinprick. A quickly-fading shout, but one she recognized—one in the voice of a vampire.

It came from Jason.

She jumped to her feet and rushed to his side. He snored in the bed.

“What is it?” Diana asked.

“Be quiet and let me think,” Eris said. She put her hands on his arm and focused again, like she had with the sword. Searching out for a demon’s Essence. And…

There it was. An invisible shape that could be seen only when she closed her eyes and stilled her breath. A point of green against the black of her eyelids. A weak thread, quite unlike the radiant sun that Lord Arqa himself had been, but that burned against her skin with the same consistency of heat, with the same foul stench of mana.

Like the Manawyrm over herself, Arqa had some hold over Jason. Eris didn’t understand how, he wasn’t a magician and had no Essence to latch on to, but she believed the evidence before her eyes.

“The sword cannot be purified,” Eris said. “At least not by me. But I believe I can lift Jason’s curse.” If she had to.

She was in no state to be casting or confronting a demon, but this was hardly a full-scale possession. Eris took her time and let herself feel comfortable, and then she reached out for the thread of green in Jason’s soul and burst it with a surge of mana. Just like putting out a fire with magic: she snuffed out Arqa’s Essence, smothering it with her own.

She did not need Supernal Vision to see that much.

Sleep lifted. Jason awoke halfway through the process, and he grabbed at her and yelled, but Rook rushed to help her and pinned him down. Then, finally, she could sense nothing more of the demon, no matter how hard she focused, and she shut off the influx of mana.

When she was finished she felt drained and feverish again. She collapsed off the bed and would have hit her head on a nightstand, but Rook grabbed her and lowered her softly.

“Jason!” Diana said. “Jason!” She climbed over him. “Are you okay?”

“Are you all right?” Rook whispered to Eris.

She looked up at him. “I am fine,” she said, but she did not feel fine. “Examine your friend.”

But he kept his eyes on her. “Thank you,” he whispered, and he gave her a long kiss.

Then he stood. Eris let herself collapse against the floor.

Jason coughed. He threw up, then then hit Rook. “Get away from me, you fucking asshole,” he gagged.

“Did it work?” Aletheia said from across the room.

“It’s hard to tell,” Rook said.

“Jason,” Diana said again, and she tried to embrace him. He hesitated but gave in, and from the ground Eris watched them share a revoltingly heartfelt and romantic look. “How do you feel?”

“Like I was run over by a carriage,” he said. Then he let Diana go. He fell backward. He put his palms against his eyes. “Oh, fuck.”

“What?”

“I tried to kill my only friends,” he said.