"I am sorry that we've lost Jordan. She was a good soldier." Adaire's voice echoes through the warehouse. At its center, incongruous in all the background dilapidation, is a gleaming model kitchen. "I don't mean to imply that mine is the greater woe. But there's a problem we need to reckon with."

"What's that?"

"It's Tilliam." Adaire jerks a thumb over her shoulder at the trussed-up archbishop, squirming in the empty coal hopper she's dumped him into. "When we were evacuating, he tried to flee me. His rebellions are becoming flagrant. He's unpredictable and hostile since Rebecca's death. Our control is slipping."

"You killed his wife in front of him," Caspar says. "What did you think would happen?"

"I presumed his fear of us would increase to fill the space where his willingness lacked," Adaire says. "I presumed incorrectly. I underestimated the man again. If we lean on him, I have no faith he'll do anything but drop out from under us."

"We could just kill him."

They turn to Peat Moss.

"Bina doesn't have a warlock anymore," Peat Moss says. "We kill him, we show him proof and let him talk to his wife, then bring him back. Maybe it'll flip him."

"That…" Adaire runs her tongue across the bottom row of her teeth. "That is actually rather shrewd, Mr. Moss."

Caspar frowns. "Does Bina want that fellow as her warlock? Seems a downgrade."

"How about this." Adaire holds her arm out. "Mistress," she says. "Your humble servants request a convocation of the Sisters to decide Tilliam's fate, whether to be granted the gift of your power. If you desire we send him to you, extend this your warlock's blade, that it may do your bidding."

"That's quite novel, Salome." I lean across Bina's stone table, studying Adaire's outstretched arm. "You do this often?"

Salome grins. "Clever, no?"

"It's not exactly necessary if you have a warlock whose decisions you trust implicitly," I say.

Saoirse chuckles. "She is so jealous that she didn't think of it."

"I'm not—" I lower the accusatory pointer that just shot up at Saoirse. "I am not jealous. It's clever, Sal."

"So humbled you think so." Salome retopologizes the facets of her legs as she crosses them. "How's your former warlock doing, Bina?"

Bina's got the aforementioned decedent curled in her lap. "She cried a lot and fell asleep," she says. "Is it okay for humans to do that?"

"She'll be okay," I say. "She's tough."

"Shame it was some fool with exploding bullets and metal muscles," Ganea says. "Would have been more honorable if it had been the Butcher."

Jordan mumbles and shifts, burying her face into Bina's stomach. "Loud-ass talker," she murmurs.

"So, then. The question before us." Salome taps the table. "Do we have our mortals kill the archbishop? I vote in the affirmative."

"I think it's a rather brilliant idea," Saoirse says. "Little Peaty is becoming so tactical."

"I'd say Sersh's vote counts for half and Bina's counts double," I say. "I mean, I vote yes as well, but we need to keep in mind she's going to have to be the archbishop's handler. I don't relish that for her."

A heavy sigh escapes Bina. "He's such a little jerk." She curls Jordan closer into herself. "I am only saying yes to this because I have a full-time emotional support human."

Jordan's eyes don't open, but her smile and faint hum of assent tell me she's awake now. Her hand creeps out and wraps around Bina's paw. There's that little poke of jealousy again. The field is too chilly and spacious, suddenly, without the arms of my husband sheltering me.

"It's unanimous," Ganea says. "He dies."

I stand and turn on my heel. "I'll be right back, ladies," I say. "Got to throw a little welcome wagon together. I know a few people who would just love to talk to this gentleman."

"Save a piece of that pious ass for me," calls Jordan. "Wanna give it a few more kicks."

Next to her and Bina, Salome's arm twitches.

Adaire's blade snicks out from her forearm.

"Well, then." Its light gleams in her eyes. "That's settled. Mr. Moss? Mr. Cartwright?"

Caspar looks away from the dirty window. He's watching the airships slowly circumnavigate the night, and the passage of their sweeping searchlights. "What?"

"Do you have any protests, sir?"

Caspar shakes his head. "Ain't going against the Sisters."

Adaire approaches Tilliam. He shakes his head rapidly as the blood drains from his face. She takes hold of his gag and lowers it. "Make ready to greet the Sisters of the Void, Tilly."

Tilliam licks his dry lips. "Corinne. Adaire. No. Please wait. I'll obey. I'll be good. I—please please no plea—"

His last word becomes a gurgling rasp as Adaire opens his throat with a cut so vicious and deep it nearly beheads him. His eyes go wide with pain and fear, then unfocus and unsee.

Paul Tilliam, archbishop of the Chamchek diocese, drops to the floor, thrashes twice, and dies.

Caspar grimaces. "You talk a lot about how untrained you are to kill, but you sure know how to do it quick."

Adaire flicks the blood from her sickle-blade, then folds it back into her forearm. "The trick is to tie them up first."

"What if it doesn't work?" Peat Moss asks.

"I suppose he just won't wake up," Caspar says. "Sisters above, Adaire. Could we not just have smothered the poor man? There's blood everywhere."

"Sorry about the mess," Adaire says. "But I have wanted to do that for a very long time."

"I thought you liked this guy," Caspar says.

She smiles as she undoes the ligatures on Tilliam's ankles and wrists. "I do."

"You got a funny way of liking."

"The only regret I have about how close we are to our goal," Adaire says, "is that I'm running out of time to do that to every single one of your theocracy's rotten potentates. I've mentioned this motivation to you, haven't I?"

Caspar nudges Tilliam's twitching corpse. "Not in those exact words."

"What's a rotten potentate?" Peat tilts an ear. "Sounds unappetizing."

"If Tilliam awakens, our plan remains the same," Adaire says. "If not, we'll have to improvise further. Distraught Widow Rebecca Tilliam might still burrow her way into the Suzerain's chambers."

Caspar's lips purse. "And then, when we're in there, we do what, exactly?"

"We overpower the feeble old man with the key around his neck, and take it."

"He'll be guarded."

"There'll be enough of us," she says. "And we only need a moment."

Caspar leans forward. "Do you have a plan to get out?"

"My plan," Adaire says, "is to be cut down by a hail of bullets, hopefully taking him with me. You can come up with your own, if you like."

He frowns. "We can't just do what we're about to do and then leave everyone to clean it up."

"They won't clean it up. They can't clean it up. We are catalyzing a reaction that has long since built. We're dropping a match into a chamberful of fumes."

"Metaphors ain't a plan, Miss Adaire."

"How's this for a metaphor? An asymptomatic terminal illness infects your civilization. An insidious disease that hides from sight, in the wrecked afterlife and your killing fields overseas. Like an apple seeming beautifully ripe, and on the first bite showing itself rotten and wormholed. But the symptoms are bubbling up onto the skin, now, and even without us, would continue to show and grow, and show and grow. Billions of decent people will do their best to live decent, quiet, out-of-the-way lives. But many will end up like you, Caspar, only without the kindness of an Old One. Do you know what's happening? All over the world? Outside of your provincial village?"

"I suppose you're going to tell me."

"What's happening is that Pastornos is losing. Its crusades are longer and costlier every time. The fifth Sarkanian crusade isn't like the fourth. It isn't like Tabarka. You've seen the streets emptying out. Your children are being fed to a machine that's starving to death."

Caspar's jaw sets. He isn't going to waste breath defending the leaders he no longer believes in.

"We are going to kill the ruler of the world, Caspar." Adaire's gentle when she says it, like she's a doctor delivering a hard diagnosis. "Pastornos will finally lose its war, the centuries-long war that pretends it's many wars. And the war will come home from across the oceans. This isn't a storybook. This won't be a glorious celebration. Not for many dark and deadly years. It's Heaven we're saving. The world we're throwing into the fire. By our hand, the edifice will collapse. Your people will behold the hollow core where they thought there was solid stone. And many, many, many will die. They'll die in droves. They'll kill each other, and the supply lines will stop and they'll starve, and the temples and hospitals will crumble."

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"You want it, don't you? You told me that already. You want the collapse."

"It doesn't matter what I want. I told you that, too." Adaire shuts the eyelids on Tilliam's stiffening body. "You were a soldier of the Father. This should be simple for you. All the terrible lies you were told have become true again by the Sisters' hands. The way to life is death. The way to joy is submission. There is a divine love, and its love is violence, and the violence is just, and the enemy is inhuman. You were built to hold these things." She tilts her head. "I don't understand why you're leaking."

"I have been told over and over," Caspar says, "that wanting the best for people is naïve. I have proven my faith with gallons of blood. I kill and I kill and then people think I'm afraid to kill when I want to stop. That's not what this is. I've seen this before. I've felt it, even. You've had a lot of pain and now you think that pain is the only honest thing. But hurting is hurting. It's physiological, not philosophical. You can quantify it, you can minimize it. Sometimes virtue isn't foolish. Sometimes cynicism isn't smart. Sometimes it's just giving up. It's protecting yourself. It's not doing the work."

Peat is watching the exchange with the rapt awe of a boxing enthusiast at a title bout.

"Perhaps you're right," Caspar says. "Probably you're right. Probably it's annoying to have this big lunk making it harder for you, for no reason. For sentimentality, I suppose you'd say. And I am sorry, sorta. But I'm going to keep at it. It's the field medic in me. If I see a way to make the world die easy, not terrified, I'll take it. That matters to me. The passage matters. You said yourself. Hurt. No time and no target, you remember that?"

She nods.

"If you're as right as you think, then you're gonna be right anyway, and everything I do is going to come to nothing."

"Keep at it, then." She shrugs. "Just don't let it slow us down, or I'll kill you."

"You think you can?"

"I think I'll try. I am nothing but this. I will become a person again when Heaven is ours and my people are in paradise. Until then, I'm an instrument to destroy what must be destroyed."

Tilliam jerks upright. He scrambles to his knees, sliding on the pool of his own blood.

He screams.

Caspar takes a ginger step forward. "Welcome back, warlock."

Tilliam shakes his head rapidly and staggers to the kitchen sink. He sticks his head into it and pukes his guts out. Then he crumples to the linoleum and weeps, head between his knees.

Caspar circumspectly walks over. "They convinced you?"

"I saw it," Tilliam whispers. "Father help me. I saw it."

"Heaven, you mean?" Caspar crouches down. He's had such contempt for this pathetic, bloodstained little man. He isn't sure what to do with it now.

"I am evil. I am a profound evil." Tilliam looks up. His eyes are rimmed with red. "I am wretched. I'm a servant of atrocity. This faith. It was the only right thing in my unclean life and it was all…" His voice fails him.

"All a lie," Caspar finishes.

"Direct me." Tilliam rises to his knees. "Whatever you'd have me do. Anything. My God, Caspar. How readily we abandoned you. With such smiles, as though we had not been abandoned in turn. My poor child." He touches Caspar's hand. He's weeping again. "All His poor children. That I might even begin to—all the blood—the smell—"

A wet burp and he's on his feet, heaving into the sink again. Peat taps nervously up. Caspar gives him a silent headshake. They wait for Tilliam to glue the shaky shards of himself back into something freestanding.

"Your mark, Tilly." Adaire leans on the kitchen island like she's having a side conversation at a cocktail hour. "Show us."

Tilliam fumbles his button-down open. Bina's wolf-tooth crest lays on his chest, right over the heart. Just like Caspar's.

"I thought yours was a tattoo," Tilliam says.

"A tattoo?" Adaire tsks. "On me? Never." She detaches from the counter and leans forward, studying the mark with an art-lover's intensity. She refocuses on Tilliam's face and smiles. "Welcome to the light, Tilly."

She steps into the limp compass of his arms and kisses him, long and deep, careless of the taste of sick and blood.

Caspar and Peat share another look. Ew, the fawn mouths.

₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪

"I've decided it's on Bina," Jordan says. "She's got me bottoming now, and I've lost my toppy viciousness. That's what got my ass killed."

"That is so unfair," Bina says.

"Don't worry." Jordan daubs the tip of her brush against her palette. She's painting the mossy tomb yard within which the four of us are gathered. "I've forgiven you."

"Well I don't care," Bina sniffs, "Cause now I'm not sorry."

"What's tearing at me is not going to the end of the line with you. Gone from this world-saving crisis thing and now I'm just… chilling." Jordan shifts to let me by with a hot kettle of red bush. "Reconnecting with the parents, being with Bean. Learning how to paint. With this colossal weight over everything, and nothing I can do about it anymore. Just waiting."

"You're healing," Bina says. She manifests a stone mug off the edge of the bench they're sharing and passes it to me. "That's not nothing, doll."

"I guess." Jordan sighs. "But it's tough to shake. I'm sitting on my hands like those chucklefucks over in the taphouse, no offense to them."

"Hey, now," Caspar says. "Those chucklefucks have put in some serious work on that village of theirs. Dance hall's almost up, you know."

I place the full mug on the easel next to Jordan's canvas. "You might think about dropping in on them."

"Sure. Eventually. Think I'll sit tight in Bina for now. I feel weird that I shot half of them. All I mean is you're still in the mud and blood and I'm painting happy little trees."

"You're talking like how I felt, after I got back from deployment," Caspar says. "It's all right, Jordy. My number'll come up soon. Plenty of afterlife to go around."

I kiss his temple as I fill his teacup.

"Afterlife." Jordan shudders. "Shit, man. That word."

"Sorry."

"No, it's fine. It's not wrong. It's just…" Jordan rests her hand on her chest. A smudge of cedar daubs her cotton dress. She's wearing dresses more. "My heart is still beating. No reason to expect it wouldn't, I guess. But I'm dead and my heart's still beating."

Bina squeezes her around the midsection. "It's not dead. It's just a different alive. That's what I keep saying, anyway."

Jordan sighs and leans back into her mistress's embrace. "The longer I'm torn up about it the more bullshit you'll let me sprinkle around the place, though." She points at a mausoleum. "Courtball hoop. Right there."

Bina blinks and there's an orange rim hanging off the edge of the masonry.

"Does anything feel different?" Caspar asks.

"Not physically, I don't think," Jordan says. "But there's like… a realigning thing, mentally. When I was alive, it was hard to shake the feeling that this was all a dream. Go to sleep, kiss a werewolf, wake up and you're back in real life. But now real life is this. It doesn't go away anymore. I'm not dreaming that my girlfriend is a werewolf. My girlfriend is a werewolf."

"I'm a creepy alien thing, not a werewolf," Bina adds. "Jordy only calls me that because she's trying to tease me. But you can't tease a thousand-year-old. I'm unteasable."

Jordan chuckles. "Did you know she made a statue of me?"

One of Bina's tails thwaps Jordan's hip. "Ohmygod babe don't tell him that."

"It's weird," Jordan continues. "How little I miss all the stuff you think you're gonna miss. I mean, that's not the real sky. That's Bean's, like, ribcage. I don't really give a shit. It's pretty. Prettier, even."

Bina giggles and kisses the top of her head.

"Would you say…" Jordan smudges paint onto the canvas. "No. That's too purply. Fuck."

"Have you painted before?" Caspar stands behind the canvas. "This is real nice."

"Inspectorate required some extracurriculars for psych health. This one was mine." Jordan gilds a headstone with soft silvery rimlight. "It fascinated me, but I always thought maybe in the next life, Jordy. Too late for this one. And then it was off to the range or CQC training."

"She's actually so good." Bina tightens her seatbelt grip on her warlock.

Jordan smooths the fur along Bina's forearm, where it nestles against her. "I'm not the next Goreini or anything, but I'm progressing."

"You really captured that tree," I say.

"Nah. I fucked the colors up. Beany just tweaked it after. Which is cheating, by the way."

"Sorry." Bina scratches Jordan's scalp. "The form's great."

"Form's easy. The colors is really the part that gets me. Anyway, I still got work to do once the key's ours. Just not until then. Then it's fixing heaven, and then it's…" Jordan trails off.

"I don't know how much of this I can rightly say." Caspar glances my way. "But apparently there's a next step after that."

"Did you tell him, Irene?" Bina hesitates. "About the, uh. The thing."

Caspar clears his throat. "The egg?"

Bina's ears rise. "Egg?"

"That Heaven's an egg," Caspar says.

"Oooh." Bina rubs her muzzle. "That's a way better metaphor."

"Bina called it an oven," Jordan says.

"An oven." I shake my head. "Bean, really? When we're fighting a maneater?"

Bina shields herself with a defensive hand. "I self-corrected!"

"Tea's done." Caspar straightens up. "Suppose I better get back to it."

"All right, darling." I sigh. "The sooner you're gone the sooner you're back."

He gives me a peck on the forehead as he passes the mug to me. "That's right. Soon."

"Cas. Hey." Jordan stands up and grasps his hand, pulling him into a tight half-hug. A few seconds in and she reconfigures it into a full one. "I should have been there. To the end of the ride."

"You will be," he whispers. "I'm carrying you with me. You're the one who taught me to be a hardass, remember?"

She laughs. "I'll be watching and yelling at you whenever you puss out. Just imagine you can hear it."

"I will."

"Good." She slaps his back and pulls away. Her eyes are wet. She wipes at their corners. "A bitch dies and suddenly the waterworks get hooked back up. Fuck."

Caspar keeps his hand light on her shoulder. "I miss you down there, Jordy."

"Ah, it's all good." Jordan makes a show of sniffing her snot loud and obnoxious. "Get this shit done, save the universe, and then step in front of an eighteen-wheeler for me. Ain't got no meatheads to make fun of up here. Need my brother back." She returns to her canvas, vision fixed firmly on her landscape subject to try and dam her tears.

"Don't let Adaire push you around." I step into his arms and rub the nape of his neck. "If she ever tries to tell you you're outvoted, remember you've got a big scary vote right behind you. And I have a lot of arms to raise."

"I'm not worried," Caspar says, and I know that's a lie, mostly to himself. But I won't call it out.

We kiss. And then he's gone.

I stand before the little depression his feet made in the grass and watch the blades straighten out once again.

"Urgh." Jordan taps her brush rapidly against the lid of her muddy-dyed water jar. "This shit is not coming together. Bean, can you reset the canvas?"

"You said that's a shortcut."

"I know." Jordan winks. "But I like when you make me feel short."

I turn back to them and resume my seat. I drink my tea and watch my sister and her warlock talk and laugh and be together.

I feel very lonely.

"I was thinking about this while I talked to Caspar. Wanted to run it by you." Jordan daubs phthalo blue over the newly blank canvas. "I think, when it comes down to it, I don't really give two shits enough about humans to be part of that whole scene. Cas and my family excepted, I never really loved them, people."

"We need all of you, Jordan," I say. "Can't just leave you behind all alone. I think you'll feel differently once you've had enough time."

"Well, you're all a bunch of people turned into one person, right?"

"Right," Bina says.

"And I wouldn't lose myself, right? I'd just gain the perspective of the whole. Which sounds fucking weird, but you seem confident it's nice."

"It's very nice," I say. "We promise."

"Okay. Then I want to be part of Beany instead."

What?

"If all of humanity is gonna form one big person ball, I would like to excuse myself. Is there room in Bina?" Jordan points her brush at my sister. "I like Bina better."

A few dozen incredulous sentences jostle for an exit from me. I look at Bina, at the confused awe on her face, and shove them back down. "Can you… give us some time to conference about that?"

"I know it's weird." Jordan starts in on her clouds. "But it's how I feel."

₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪

"That was Benji. Thank you, Benji. You were very… uh, brave. Up next—" The emcee checks his beer-stained signup clipboard. Abraham. Abraham, are you still here?" He scans the neon-tinted dim. "We have Abraham? Abe?"

A table shuffles out of the way as the next singer approaches the stage.

"Whoa, yes we do!" The emcee makes a routine out of adjusting the microphone stand further up. "We have a lot of Abraham."

The big man smiles good-naturedly as he takes the spotlight.

The music starts with a squealing smash of feedback, and resolves into a thundering dude-rock rhythm. "This one goes out to my sister," the man they're calling Abraham says. "Jordy, you better be watching."

A few cheers and whoops from the crowd as they recognize the song. They sing along with Abraham on the first verse. Everyone knows the words.

And maybe a few of them ask themselves, as he rounds the corner into the chorus, why this broad-shouldered baritone's face glistens with tears as he sings Not Just Yet by Temple Tower. It's not exactly a lament or a ballad. But the veterans—and there's more than a few in the room—don't wonder. They know what it looks like when a militiaman sings to someone who can't hear them anymore.

What they don't know is that a dimension away, there's a taphouse full of souls joining in, and that Jordan Darius is standing on her seat as Bina hastily props it up with a pseudopod, that she's laughing and crying, and she's singing that stupid chorus right along with him.

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