No matter how fertile her imagination Dimia could never have guessed what Halo was doing at the moment her wish went skyward in his favor. Nor could she have known how much he truly needed that prayer. At Rattanak's behest the wayward Reaper waged battle against an ancient hobgoblin monk who lived alone in the remote wastes, exiled by the Justicars who'd pronounced his interpretations of Xul's Word as blasphemous and self-serving. Halo, at the command of his disembodied puppet-master, had dispatched a number of magi and mystics in their zigzag journey thus far but this mad pariah they now faced was the greatest challenge they had yet reckoned with. The sandman fought with two rune-engraved staves which he held in hands that were themselves glyphed and twinned to the enchanted rods. Sword rang against stave. The sandmaster controlled the sands themselves with those humming sticks. He flung the artifacts forward to send up great fans of silt in attempts push Halo back and raked the bronze poles together to drive gusts of blinding grit into the Reaper's eyes. The exile spun the poles to incite the countless particulates into biting cyclones and drove them into the sand to open yawning sinkholes under Halo's feet. The Reaper succumbed to the harsh onslaught. Darkness. The sun veiled by a rush of heavy sand. The grit entered Halo's mouth, his eyes. He considered submission and death, the peace it would bring. Perhaps it was best that the Reaper stay buried and the cursed sword along with him. But of course the sandmaster could unearth the blade for himself using those telekinetic rods, and perhaps find ways to put the Justicar's sword to even more odious purpose. Beyond that, Halo still felt the unwavering call in his heart of those he loved. Mulia. His daughters. His teammates, his friends. All out there, surely worried to madness about his fate.

He had not the strength to defeat this grandmage alone. But he was not alone. The emperor in the sword would lend him strength if he would accept it and the price affixed. Halo choked on the silt. It burned to breathe. The sand weighed like a mountain, an anvil crushing his chest. He accepted the dead hobgoblin king's bargain and let his defenses fall and took in Rattanak's tainted power. Halo heard his own possessed lips speak stolen words of energy that gave his runed body a surge of new and unholy might. The Reaper rose from the earth and spit the sand from his lungs and resumed his clash with the ancient sandmaster.

— • —

A wisp of smoke rose above the old tomb. Jinx's heart sank at the sight and then winced with pain in reminder of the modifications done to the organ by Wral's diabolical surgeons. He stifled his shame as a Reaper for allowing himself to be followed and ambushed like this. He had seen no sign of followers or watchers and taken steps of precaution, including the purchase of this very crypt. He kept his movements erratic, changing times and routes often. His new masters were masters indeed. They hid well and they knew much. Were they watching him even now? He looked at the black birds in the cemetery trees. Were they studying him through those beady eyes? Through the blank stares of the statues? Sorcery gave its users many ways with which to see. The skin on Jinx's chest was still raw from the arcane surgery that the Inquisitor's doctors had performed on him. His keepers claimed they could trace his location through their workings alone. And so they needed no eyes at all. The rune man chafed at the thought of being under the heel of Wral and his afterlings. Perhaps Jinx should at least be grateful he still had his life at all after being discovered as a practitioner. Or at least his hands and tongue... for now. But what kind of existence was this, as a slave and traitor?

The mausoleum had been broken into, surely by the Inquisitors while Jinx was under their scalpels and needles. The Reaper smelled the burning as he drew closer to the gutted crypt. He stepped inside with his lantern and a dagger raised. Everything within the vault had been either taken or burned. Soot coated the stone walls and sarcophagi and there were heaps of ash on the floor. The corpses he'd experimented on were crisped and contorted, all black dust and bones. The tome was gone. Had the necronomicon been burned to ashes? Or taken by his new dominators?

Jinx plotted his future course. He would do as Wral commanded and continue to work at the Triad as if nothing had changed, biding his time as he sought to find a solution to his new troubles. There had to be some way out of this predicament. Someone he could go to for help. His superiors? Rooster? Could he even trust the commander? Jinx knew he must be patient and plan his next move carefully, like a true Reaper—if he was still deserving of such a title. Or... he could simply submit and accept Wral's invitation to cooperate. Maybe there truly was opportunity in that path. Perhaps Jinx could find a way to advance his goals from within the shadowy organization the Inquisitor spoke of. And to risk their ire was to tempt death, or worse. The Reaper began to clear away the mess made by his enslavers. He would sell the tomb off—he had no use for it now—and pay back his creditors and hope there would be anything left to squirrel away. As Jinx's body worked, his mind worked in concert. There was much to ponder and regret.

— • —

With the bandits stopped, Hendle's secondchief Emery led the Reapers outside of town. Their destination was a dwelling where Catatonia's women had hidden the true source of information Team 3 had come to the Hinterlands for in the first place—before being blackmailed into rescuing those girls from the costumed cliffside bandits. Within that far-off farmhouse, Emery explained, was a wounded man who claimed to be a Reaper, now once again a prisoner but of much more gentle keepers than the hobgoblins he'd escaped from. The women of Catatonia had the recovering Nation soldier hidden there all along, a lone wounded Reaper tucked in a pale and peeling farmhouse on the far outskirts of their township, using him as a pawn in their bid to have the Reapers save their girls. The captive claimed there had been other soldiers who had not escaped with him, Emery explained, and knew where they were held.

Three sisters accompanied Emery and the Reapers on this journey into the plains. The trio had been working these fields of feycorn and manna beans when the slavers came in their feathered getups and threw them into their cliffside pens. One of those accompanying siblings was the Witness to Blacwin's murder of Thirteen and her name was Cowrie. Blacwin studied the woman for signs of her intentions regarding what she had seen or perhaps not seen him do. Had the woman already told her kin of his misdeed? Blacwin wanted to get her alone, find out if she would agree to protect his secret. Thirteen had, just prior to his death, been poised to force himself on those enslaved girls. Surely Cowrie shed no tears for the monster's sudden passing no matter how it came to pass.

Nail traveled alongside Emery as they made their way along the dusty path. He admired many things about the woman. Her observant eye, her blunt manner. She held her slingbow like a third arm, ready to fire a shot into the breast of anyone who crossed her or threatened her kin. Nail suspected Catatonia wouldn't have needed the Reapers at all to deal with the bandit threat if they only had a few more bloods like her. And though his eyes were worse by the day they had no trouble seeing that she cut a fine figure. A fantasy began to surface in his mind, of Nail and Emery wrapped in soft furs before a warm hearth in a cottage as winter's screaming banshees howled outside the door.

"This man in your care give you a name?" Nail asked, shaking the thoughts away. Of course he was happy to know any Reaper had survived hobgoblin captivity but Nail hoped Emery would speak a handle he knew. Let it be Halo or Tusk or Risper or Adamore, he asked of the stars.

"Merek," Emery said. "Claimed he was training to be a Reaper, on a mission into the wastes, when he was captured. Do you know him?"

Nail did not. Any Nation man whose heart still beat was a favorable thing, but still the grizzled Reaper was made more bitter by the news. So the captive wasn't one of those he'd hoped for. And this 'Merek' was a mere trainee, to salt the wound—not even a true Reaper. Nail wished Fate would show her wicked face so he could spit at her twice, once for each eye.

"I know that name," said Jasha. "Blacwin, he was among the men in your final training mission, was he not?"

"He was," Blacwin confirmed. The half-ylf too cursed the stars at the hearing of the moniker. Merek was indeed one of those three whom Blacwin went into the wastes with (aside from poor Osred, whose life was quickly lost when his experimental glider crashed as they descended into those wretched dunes). They had gone out in search of hobgoblin heads for the completion of their training at Instructor Barda's order. All three of those fellow surviving trainees—Merek and Addison and Barnibus—were the last few recruits who'd made it through all the brutal gauntlets of Reaper training to go on to attempt the final test. Blacwin found them all to be heartless and vicious men from the outset, as the Nation would have them be. The halfblood himself was the exception to this, a deer among wolves who had been forced to wear the skin of the predators to disguise his own true core. Such had been the case from the earliest age his memory allowed. Blacwin had been the only trainee to return from that last mission, having abandoned the others in the nightful wastes. Merek surely had ill will toward Blacwin for leaving his post, especially if he had suffered badly in the enemy's hands afterward. Though, Merek had seemed the least cruel among that company, and none from that party were evidently as despicable as Thirteen and Vulture had since proven themselves to be. Perhaps Merek would be grateful for Blacwin's participation in his rescue and just let sleeping dragons lie. Time had its way of turning minds. He would soon find out.

Jasha slapped Blacwin's back, made buoyant by the news. "Merek may know what became of the others after you lost your way. Barnibus was my top student from that crop, a stellar deadeye. And Addison was as fine a soldier as they come. The stars are with us."

Blacwin nodded and found himself yet again playacting. Pretending a smile to hide his past sins and grudges.

"I don't think I've yet heard the story, Blacwin," said Vulture. "How did you exactly become separated from your brothers that night? You mean to say you left your brothers behind? And Barda still honored you with a dagger? Reapers must be desperate for men. If that is indeed what you—"

"Put a pike in it," Nail said. "But I would still hear the answer, Blacwin. Tell us of that day." Nail had read the records once he was made Team 3's leader and Blacwin was brought into the unit, but he had his doubts about the soldier's story. How had Blacwin been the only one to survive the hostile wastes and make it back home from his training mission, evading death or capture—with the head of the region's most-wanted enemy in his satchel, no less? Had it something to do with those uncanny eyes that could see in pitch shadows and the diminished need for sleep or food that gave Blacwin such an edge? Nail knew those signs, as well as how slowly the scout's wounds healed, and what they could mean. But he had to be sure before he would accuse any man of having tainted blood. He listened closely for Blacwin's answer.

"I was on watch," Blacwin recounted. "Out patrolling the perimeter of our camp. I inhaled some toxic fume that rose from a foul fissure beneath my step. The gases clouded my memory, made me see strange visions. When I came back to myself I was alone, having wandered far off." Blacwin had considered other fabrications to explain his separation from the group. He'd toyed with saying he'd lost control of his own glider and broken away from the course of his fellows, or that they'd been separated in a gob ambush. But Blacwin ultimately realized it best to invent a cause that would neatly fit into the stories of the men he'd abandoned in the event they did make it back home, which is indeed what he had expected to happen. The half-ylf was as surprised as anyone to discover the other trainees had never returned. The three recruits had already claimed their gob heads and were on the way home to deliver them. Blacwin's story of the hallucinatory gases—a phenomenon already known to exist in the wastes—could not be challenged by the others. They could speak on their suspicions about him all they like, but his story was in his mind ironclad. "I found a cave to shelter myself in," he went on. "Turns out, the Blind Prophet had the same idea. It was in fact a back entrance to his temporary compound... a secret escape tunnel that led right to his chamber. I relieved 'Orchid' of his head and made my way home. Saw the gathering gob forces and rushed to warn Fort Nothing. Nail was the first to see me at the gates. I helped them fight to win the bastion back from the wasters. And that's about the sum of it."

The others seemed satisfied. Blacwin's mind went to Thirteen as they walked on. He had murdered the Reaper in cold blood. It had not been in self-defense and it had not been in service to the Nation. But as a Reaper and as a recon scout prior to that, and earlier as Grendyll's sinister acolyte, Blacwin had grown accustomed to killing with shocking ease. At least he did not relish it as so many other men did. Further, all the people he killed after breaking from the hold of his cold-blooded mentor were combatants, never the innocent. The other Reapers were shocked when Blacwin had revealed to them that Thirteen had fallen to his death but none seemed especially bothered by his passing. The only man that seemed to be struck with much sorrow over Thirteen's loss was his partner in mayhem, Vulture. That man had turned darker and grimmer at the news. Blacwin truly did feel he had done the world a favor by removing Thirteen from it. Why, then, did he still feel so much guilt? Was it right for him to take judgment and execution in his own hands? Was it not his duty to respect the law and let its forces and agents properly handle such things? Should he have simply reported the man rather than mercilessly kill him? Blacwin looked back over at the sisters and found Cowrie's eyes on him. What thoughts churned behind those unscryable orbs? Would she report on what they had taken in?

"The sisters don't say much," Blacwin said to Emery.

"When men ran things 'round here," Emery replied, "we 'ladies' were told to keep our heads down and our tongues still. Now that we have to keep things going on our own, many of us have warmed up and found our true voices—but when it's been drilled into your skull every morning and night that only those with cocks and knuckers had any right to speak, some find it difficult to find the words. But things get better by the day. More and more of my sisters-in-spirit come out of their shells as time goes on, as they come to appreciate there will be no fists or rods waiting to silence them. In many ways that event that turned our men into lambs was the best thing to ever happen to Catatonia."

"Until you needed some men to do your dirty work for you," said Vulture.

"Shut your hole," Nail commanded. "That's an order."

The party soon could see the farmhouse in the diffusing twilight, a dark tumor on the prairie's sloping back. Faint candleglow gasped in the structure's windows. The barest light, kept low to avoid the notice of bandits and wasters and other unwanted eyes. Two lean figures waited on the dim porch. The pair looked like corpses in the pale half-light until one of them stood to greet the newcomers. An image of Skelen's heinous rotters flashed into Nail's mind at the sight of the emaciated forms. But this was a harmless elderly couple who awaited their party, having been forewarned of their coming by one of Emery's riders. The long-timers were the parents of the trio now returned home by Team 3.

Cowrie and her homesick sisters gleefully rushed into the arms of their anguished mother who never dared dream this moment would come to pass and the fair three crowded their listless father and peppered his ashen empty head with fond kisses. Blacwin fought down his own tears at the sight of the saccharine reunion. The satisfying warmth of a good-deed-done filled his soul and threatened to gush from his own sockets. Some Reaper, some killer. Perhaps he was 'human' after all. 'Half' nothing. A whole man.

— • —