The bathrooms in the Hall of the Pious Crusaders are the cleanest in any public building Caspar's ever used. Marble and enamel and brass. There's these newfangled taps that can tell when your hands are under them. They're awful, and he needs to wave under them like a Tabarkan hand-dancer to get them to recognize his presence, but it's more about the possibility. The dream.

Before he leaves the bathroom, he splashes water across his ensorcelled face. They're walking around in full evoked disguise whenever they're in public this past week. Caspar Cartwright and Jordan Darius are now officially missing persons of interest, with their old faces on bulletin boards and street corners. As a bonus, the constant low-level evocations act as fabulous endurance training. The dizzy spells aren't entirely gone, but they're rarer.

In a golden, echoing chamber, its corniced roof painted with thousands of stoic sword-saints, he finds the statue in his honor. The third Tabarkan Crusade, second-to-last in the century's row, just behind the Rowhai Crusade and an empty plinth that awaits the memorial for the ongoing fifth Sarkanian Crusade.

The statue's of a militia trooper, in oolitic limestone, hewn in brutalist deco, with a shell helmet on their lumpy head and a carbine in their fist. That's a RMR-10, Caspar thinks, with a lot of liberties taken. Those guns were ghastly, jammed as soon as you looked at them and baked your palms in the Tabarka heat if you left them out in the sun for longer than an eyeblink. They were quite gallant-looking, though. He supposes, with statuary, that's what counts.

"Real meathead proportions." Jordan's footsteps echo as she comes up next to him. "Big shoulders, little head. Reminds me of you."

He chuckles. "Was just thinking it looked like my old CO, except how tiny the feet are. Guess it's an art thing. Exaggeration. Don't know if I get it."

"Caspar the Critic." Jordan adjusts her duffel bag. "Peat. Stop scooting around."

"Turn me," the bag murmurs. "I wanna see the art thing."

Jordan angles the bag's slightly open zipper upward. "How about those bathrooms, though, right?"

"Yessir," Caspar says. "Bet they spent more on one of them toilet bowls than on my pension."

"If we hadn't thrown your ID away, the tickets woulda been free, though." Jordan pats his shoulder. "Makes up for the shell shock and the canceled engagement, yeah?"

"Sure." Caspar turns from the statue. "High Inspectorum next?"

Jordan sucks air through her teeth. "Don't think so. Too risky. And I don't miss it at all. Not like you kinda do."

"Me, miss the militia?" Caspar raises a defensive brow.

"Yeah, bro. Not the shooting, maybe. But you're a team player." Jordan points up at the statue's epaulettes. "Bet you miss the uniform, too."

He scoffs. I'd never gang up on my man, not in front of Jordy, but between you and me, reader, she's right. Until the cruel reality of combat bled all over Caspar's hands, he adored the militia. The regimented life, the security of service, the abnegation of decisions. The rucking songs and the tea-powder lattes with his friends, before the world chewed them up. And he does miss the uniform. He thinks he looked pretty good in it.

(My husband, the king of understatement. He was a fucking panty-melter in those service scarlets. If he hadn't insisted on talking about his damn fiancée all the time, he could have banged half his platoon.)

"If the Inspectorum's off the table, I declare us out of tourist shit to do." Caspar checks his wristwatch. "With 48 hours to spare before the Tilliam rendezvous."

"Time enough," Jordan says. "If we're about to move around in Tilliam's crowd, we have to look flashier than we do. We're getting suits, and a haircut for you, and a chance to live baby Jordy's dream for me. We're going to the motherfuckin' Linen Quarter."

The rest of the day flies past in an extended montage of makeovers and materiel. The elegant row houses and lofts of the Linen Quarter, its subtle and sophisticated tailors. All of it would be entirely out-of-reach of our warlocks if they didn't have a trove of stolen cash from the archbishop's yacht. It goes halfway toward clearing them out, regardless.

Jordan drops an eye-watering amount of money on a little brother-and-brother boutique for a promised one-day turnaround. The spindly couturier purses his lips as he passes his measuring tape to his sibling in order to cross the span of Caspar's linebacker shoulders.

My husband excuses himself, a little red in the face, with half a rack of dress shirts to try on beneath the jacket. Has the illicit thrill worn off when I see my warlock's bare chest, now that he's my fiancé? Now that I know what that skin tastes like? Well, maybe it's a little less illicit. But it's more thrilling.

He meets back up with Jordan, who's weighed herself down with silk separates and a periwinkle-colored shopping bag from—

"Dorotea's?" Caspar reads it. "They make fancy dresses, don't they?"

"That's right." Jordan pulls the bag closer to herself with a crinkle.

"Didn't know you were a fancy dress type," Caspar says.

"I'm not, usually. I just…" Jordan clears her throat. "I'm normally the big, strong one when I date. Getting thrown around by an eight foot tall werewolf chick has me feeling a little, uh. Lipstick-curious. Just a thing I'm trying out."

Caspar smiles. "I bet you'll look wonderful in it."

"All right, all right." Jordan shuffles the bag into the stack. "Let's get you a haircut. Military-style. Your ass is walking around looking like a poet."

₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪

"A tweak to the plan," Adaire says. "A somewhat impactful one, Mr. Cartwright."

"I'm listening," Caspar says. "Honest."

"Air raaaaid," cries a tinny bit-crushed voice, as the multiball catch loosens two more marbles into the machine.

"Tilliam's going to a little party tomorrow night. A reception a friend is putting on where they'll toast his heroic escape. I need him there and on his game; if we collar him beforehand, he'll be too visibly distraught. But an obstacle has presented itself. You're listening, Caspar? Peat Moss?"

"Uh huh." Peat Moss is propped up on the machine, gazing at the cascade.

"Swear to the Old Ones, I am." Caspar glances away from the machine's gleaming chrome. "Obstacle, you said."

"Rebecca Tilliam," Adaire says. "She is on an airship crossing the Montane."

At the mention of his first adolescent crush, Caspar misses the last multiball. It slips between the game's flippers with a digitized explosion sound. "Game Over!" crackles a voice from the machine. "Go kiss your wife, Caspar!"

Caspar gives the plunger a companionable squeeze. "In a minute, pinball."

Jordan taps her chin. "Poor Rebecca, coming into this whole mess. For a two-timing man. Not that, uh, you need to feel guilty about that."

"I don't." Adaire breezily refills her stein. "She's due in Pastornos, the morning after next. So we have to move on him. At the party."

"What about after?" Jordan asks.

"After, he gets into his fancy car and his fancy motorcade and heads to his fancy hotel," Adaire says. "No, that's its own complication, and a worse one. The party will do. You know how to act at these sorts of things?"

"Been to enough of them as a fancy ornament for the security team," Jordan says. "I can coach Caspar. It's too early for our tailored digs but I reckon we can throw together a new-money kinda look."

"Capital. I'll get the two of you on the guest list and sweet talk you in. We'll turn him there and extract him." Adaire scratches her shoulder, where a trim silver brocaded epaulette sits. Her fashion in Heaven, much like her mistress, is always completely colorless and bleeding-edge. "The question remains, however—what's to be done about Rebecca? Unless we deal with her, she'll compromise our control of the archbishop."

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Caspar raises a finger toward Jordan. "Don't say it."

Jordan arches her brow. "Don't say what?"

"You were gonna say we oughta bump her off before she becomes a problem," Peat Moss says.

"Exactly," Caspar says. "See? Peaty smells your bloodthirst."

"Hey now!" Jordan protests. "That woman's just lovely." She can't resist throwing in: "And I think she may have earned an early ticket to our lovely, lovely afterlife."

"Are you fuckers talking about killing Rebecca Tilliam?" Sam demands, from the bar.

Jordan shrugs. "Would it be so terrible to have the prairie rose of Chamchek hanging out at the taphouse?"

"She's joking, Sammy." Caspar steps back from the pinball machine. Sotto voce, he says to Jordan: "We are not killing Rebecca Tilliam, Jordy."

"Then Cas is the one who decides what we do about her," Jordan says.

"We'll figure something out." Caspar pours himself one for the road. "Paul Tilliam, if he's a good man, will play along. Keep his wife out of danger."

Peat Moss takes position at the controls and manifests his new hands. "I have been waiting so long to try this."

"The warlocks are hogging the damn pinball again," Sam observes to Hollis, who's sitting at the taphouse bar tuning the acoustic guitar.

Hollis only gives a vague nod. He's in the zone right now. The templar's improving at a rapid clip. The rolls and dancing fingerpicking patterns he never thought he'd play; they're jumping to his fingertips now. He doesn't feel dead anymore when he holds this instrument. He feels like he's dawning.

"Just one more round and it's yours, civilians," Jordan says. "We'll be out on call for the Alexandra thing."

₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪

The Alexandra thing. That's my headache, the reason I'm not there right now, lounging on the bar and throwing smoky looks at my husband. We need to understand how and why Alexandra's working with the world-eater. My second-youngest sister has always been a fiery young woman. Even exiting her first millennium didn't cool her heels. Of all my sisters, she's the one I've always struggled to reach. But she idolizes Ganea, and now Gan's on our side.

Ganea carries me on her massive steel-shod back as we journey into the labyrinth of basilicae within which Alexandra roosts. The endless intricacies and ribcage buttresses have landslid to form an ersatz pileup of matchstick columns and spires, like the nest of some massive brooding bird. It's a potent natural defense; the architectural flourishes are so mashed and mislaid into magic-eye chaos that they threaten a headache even for the eldritch. Your average attack angel spirals out of the sky upon witnessing it; a clattered pile of their corpses lay among the spiky floor like dead insects.

We're made of sterner stuff, although poor minimalist Salome's entire being is revolting at the landscape, and her form has compressed into a reflective sphere. "It's just so tacky," she groans, from the ship's-bridge observation platform upon which our manifestations stand.

"You know, when we visited you, you dismembered Bina," I say.

"That was an innocent mistake," Salome says. "This is a declaration of war upon taste."

"What do these buttons do, Gan?" Bina is puzzling over a console bank at the edge of the bridge.

The manifestation seated before the console slaps an inquisitive pseudopod away. "Don't touch anything."

Ganea is hosting us today. The interior of her demesne is constructed like a massive warship, all steel corridors and deadly machinery. As our warlocks dock and emerge into her boiler room guts, ranks of manifestations in faceless armor snap into salutation. They pass trooping ranks of the same insectoid soldiers that nearly destroyed us. They file through a massive war room with a football field-sized map of Known Heaven on its wall, with the movements of every sister and every major relict marked and tracked.

They're blocked from the bridge by two hulking stormtroopers who cross glaives over the entrance. Standing before them, in parade rest, is the Iron Butcher.

"Cognitohazard on the bridge," he says. "The mortals will have to wait in the mess."

"Is there tea in the mess?" Adaire inquires.

"Yes," rumbles one stormtrooper.

"Splendid." She tilts her head at a hatchway. "Lead on."

"Thought Ganea said you should split," Caspar says. "Do what makes you happy."

"I am." The Butcher wheels the mess door open for them.

"Wait! Wait a second." I slip out the bridge door. "Caspar."

"Yes, Miss Irene?"

I squeeze past the two bulky manifestations. I kiss him. "Hi, Mr. Cartwright."

He grins. "Hi, Mrs. Cartwright."

"Be right back. Doing ineffable shit." I scurry away again. "Save me some tea."

I rejoin my sisters on the bridge. Salome points into the dark. "Out there. Spotted while you were canoodling."

"I saw, okay?" I remove my heels and feel the cool metal on the soles of my feet. "I can multitask."

A flash of scarlet in the depths. The fleet form of our sister, darting within the fractured majesty of her home.

I echo a greeting across her lair. A warm one that doesn't hide my apprehension, but qualifies it with affection. Embedded in my third syllable is an explanation that we have humans in attendance and a request for mortal-level communication.

The responding eruption of void tongue comes with such urgency that for a moment I fear Alexandra has just liquefied our warlocks' brains. But a panicky inquest into Caspar's mind shows that Ganea has soundproofed the mess hall. I feel a surge of gratitude for my battle-ready elder sister.

Distrust and hostility, fear and guilt. Alexandra knows why we're here and how little we understand her actions. She's not interested in explaining herself to us. She wants us gone.

"Thought this might happen." Ganea slides her great horned helmet on. "I'll retrieve her."

"Hold on. Hold on." I step in front of her. "We don't need to do that. She's overwhelmed. There's too many of us here."

"This is our sister, Irene," Salome says. "Not an exotic fish."

"I know I'm making excuses," I say. "But let's give her a chance, right? We'll wait outside and keep trying. And she'll either come out ready to talk, or she'll come out swinging."

"I don't believe I can stay here." Salome hugs her facets closer to herself. "I'm sorry. I'm trying to make light of it, but it really does hurt. My prime form's too vulnerable to cognitohazard."

"You don't have to stick around, Sal." I keep my voice as kind as I know how to make it. It's got to be bad when Salome's willing to admit this kind of weakness to me. "I won't waste anyone's time."

"You're still recovering, dear," Saoirse says. "You can't take her on alone."

"I'll stay with Irene." Ganea takes her helmet back off and shakes out her steel-cable hair. "The rest of you can go as you please."

"Will you be okay?" Bina murmurs.

"Sure." I squeeze her shoulder, which takes a lot bigger of a stretch than I remember. "Go with Salami and Sersh. Make sure they stay out of trouble." I wink. "Co-leader."

She kisses my cheek and departs. I am alone with Ganea, the colossus who tore me in half.

We stand for a while in silence. I absorb the clanking of Ganea's manifestations as they attend their tasks across the bridge. It seems inefficient to me, externalizing these processes, but Ganea beat the shit out of us, so there's presumably a method behind it.

I break the quiet. "Do you know what I've been remembering lately?"

Ganea fixes her red gaze on me.

"I remember when you appeared in my afterlife," I say. "In my sky. You and Sal and Eight. My people were so utterly convinced that Heaven was over and the void monsters were here to devour our souls. We had the same myths about it that humanity does. The ultimate antagonist."

"You hardly looked appetizing," Ganea says. "Too soggy for me. No crunch."

I chuckle. Ganea doesn't smile, but her stony demeanor softens, just a bit.

"We were so close," I say. "After I transcended. I was so afraid of you at first. And you were so patient with me. You remember?"

"Yes."

"This war we fought against the Father. I know we won, but sometimes it doesn't feel that way. The way we all fell out, what it did to Eight. What it did to all of us, I guess."

"You want that back," Ganea says.

"I do. You know I do."

"I don't know how we get there."

"Me neither. But I think humanity is how we start."

A throne of gleaming blades and chrome ammunition unfolds from the floor with the clattering sound of a loading magazine. Ganea settles into it, her face pensive. Even seated, she's thrice my height.

A metal stool with a purple cushion atop it slats from the floor next to it.

"What would you have done?" I ask as I sit. "With Heaven. I'd pictured some iron fist stuff. The way you always talked about humanity, it sounded like you were ready to build an army out of them."

Ganea rests her chin on her removed helmet. "Their weapons and wars impressed me. Beyond any other mortals we've ever encountered. Their eagerness to shed blood for half-baked abstractions. Their grasping for power for no sake but power's sake. My Heaven would be their battlefield and training ground. To perfect them."

"But who would they have fought?" I ask. "It's not like their forms would have been able to survive out in the void. Not for the time it would take for us to find another world to conquer. And even if they could, and even if we were in the conquering business, having another sister would be so much more of a force multiplier than an army of squishy little mortals."

Ganea stares into the maddening mandala beyond the bridge. "All true," she says. "I thought the same thing."

"So, then. What would you have done?"

She holds her helmet out to one side. A pair of lesser manifestations retrieve it. She looks down at me. "I'd have made them our sister, too. You're convinced it's their love that will align them. I believed it would be their will to conquer. As it was for me."

"I didn't know you felt that way," I say. "I'd have been less of an asshole to you."

"You were an enemy," Ganea says. "And I pulverized you regularly."

"Well, I was terse."

She snorts.

"Sister Humanity, huh?" I nudge her—it's like elbowing an anvil. "After all the poo-pooing you did against them?"

"It's new," Ganea says. "I only thought that way after I met the Iron Butcher. All that humanity could be. I aspire to the way he killed: no passion, all proficiency. I would have defeated you if I were more like him."

"You really like this guy. The Ganea I know would have cut him loose. You're keeping him around like a house cat."

"I don't understand why he's back," Ganea says. "I offered to send him away, to give him back his dreams. But he's staying here instead." She waves a hand around her steely warship. "It's not a pleasant place."

"Do you love each other?"

"I don't know," Ganea says. "I don't know how humans do that. And I don't care. I'm the goddess of war, not of love. That's you."

"I'm not—" I pause. I consider. I am the one who keeps on extolling the virtues of mortal romance. And I've never taken control of a Heaven before, never acted as a deity for a mortal. If we're going to be a pantheon for them… well, I could be the goddess of much worse.

"Well, I say you do." I tap the third eye on my forehead.

"Fine." She tries to look annoyed. I don't think she is.

"Be right back, okay?" I tap her bracer. "We'll be at this for a while and I wanna say hello to my beau. Talk through the plan, that sort of thing."

"All right."

"And I'm interested in your tea."

"It's acceptable."

"You can come along, y'know."

"No."

"Suit yourself." I start off the bridge.

She stands up and falls in with me. "I might as well hear the briefing."

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